And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for a...ll the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

A law explains a set of observations; a theory explains a set of laws. The quintessential illustration of this jump in level is th...e way in which Newton's theory of mechanics explained Kepler's law of planetary motion. Basically, a law applies to observed phenomena in one domain (e.g., planetary bodies and their movements), while a theory is intended to unify phenomena in many domains. Thus, Newton's theory of mechanics explained not only Kepler's laws, but also Galileo's findings about the motion of balls rolling down an inclined plane, as well as the pattern of oceanic tides. Unlike laws, theories often postulate unobservable objects as part of their explanatory mechanism. So, for instance, Freud's theory of mind relies upon the unobservable ego, superego, and id, and in modern physics we have theories of elementary particles that postulate various types of quarks, all of which have yet to be observed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Thus will the fondest dream of Phallic science be realized: a pristine new planet populated entirely by little boy clones of great... scientific entrepeneurs ... free to smash atoms, accelerate particles, or, if they are so moved, build pyramids--without any social relevance or human responsibility at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the un...iversal beauty, to which every particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Listen. We converse as we live--by repeating, by combining and recombining a few elements over and over again just as nature does ...when of elementary particles it builds a world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The season developed and matured. Another year's installment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemer...al creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Like Christianity, modern science teaches that these things of the world of senses are not really real, but that there is a more r...eal reality, in Nature, behind these appearances, a permanent, unchanging reality in comparison to which the world of appearance is ever changing and is an accidental product of our sense organs. Unlike the "other world" of Christianity, which is world of spirit or mind, altogether without body, this "other world" of science is a world of matter, altogether without spirit, life, or mind. This ultimately real world is the world of particles (little bits of dead stuff), of space and time and of forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, and more recently the strong and weak nuclear forces).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It... makes the meanest of us sacred--it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust--the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal th...at allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good ole boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »